Similitude
by my-echo
Summary: Young Baldwin is dead, and Sibylla is alone with her dreadful thoughts.


She had killed her son.

It had been simple. Horribly simple.

Almost delicate in its graceful, damning way.

She had half-thought, in the moment before, that surely God would not allow it. Surely his angel's hand would grasp her wrist, and tell her that it had been but a horrible dream, a test of her devoted faith, which had been wavering. Her child would not die; he would not suffer. He was whole, and would remain so until he grew as ancient as the cypress trees.

Perhaps, she also thought, that at the last minute God would strike her dead, with lightning. Surely then her son would be quite free to be a king, be he destined to decay with her brother's disease or be healed by a physician, who must discover a cure.

Her hand was poised, trembling, above the ear of her sleeping child. It could not happen. There would be a miracle.

When her fingers dipped the phial and the poison slid into the crevice to do its cold and deadly work, Sibylla knew she had gone mad. Or perhaps it was a nightmare. Surely she would never kill her son.

_Awake_, she told herself. _Awake, and behold him sleeping alive, with the poison still securely in its phial, no harm done to Baldwin, see? See, my son? You live. You live. _

The paladin on his pewter horse was staring. His spear was like the pointing finger of God.

_Sibylla, you have killed your son._

_It is finished._

She sat, frozen, and she felt him grow cold.

_He must have a blanket, _she thought blindly, covering him with her shawl, grasping the rigid body—_when _had he become so stiff?—_It would not do for him to catch his death..._

The tears began to fall, mocking her, mocking the false picture of a loving mother and her sweetly slumbering boy-that-was-king. She had committed treason.

It was not merely a treason against the young ruler of Jerusalem who lay peacefully before her, but a treason against her brother, who lay deformed and weeping in the earth—if bodies could weep. A treason against all mothers. A blight against God, so vast in its depraved perdition that the earth would surely cave in upon itself. She had brought the Apocalypse.

_But my son is saved._

A quiet smile shuddered upon her lips, and then her mind began to crumble, and her ears began to ring.

The world seemed hot, burning, and the rain that fell—was it Heaven's sorrowful horror at her deed?—did nothing to quench the suffocating madness that was threatening to break its barriers—so carefully built by herself, the moment she found that her son was destined to be a living, rotting corpse.

Her boy, rotting. Masked. Swathed in concealment, hiding the horrors beneath.

Her boy, body covered in scabrous oozing pustules, his fingers falling off.

No, it could not have been. She had saved him.

She had damned the people. And now Guy would rule.

Guy.

The thought of him made her blood run cold and hot at intervals, and a burning bile to rise in her throat, threatening to spill upon the cold form beside her—whom she instinctively wrapped tighter in the shawl—Had Guy ever loved him, she wondered.

Such a thought seemed ridiculous. The man was incapable of it.

He had, by all accounts, been kind to the boy, but beneath his kindness was a sort of veiled contempt, as though Baldwin had been an interesting insect.

No, he had not loved him. The only scenario in which Sibylla could picture him having any affection was if Baldwin had in fact been sired by him. She was glad he had not.

A door creaked on its hinges, and she looked, hazily, squinting.

"You lie with him as though he were completely healthy," said the familiar hated voice, so slow, so measured. It would have been sensual from another man. "Are you sure that's wise, Sibylla?"

She closed her eyes, not sure whether to scratch out his eyes, tear out his heart, or simply spit upon his bearded face. Speaking of beards, perhaps she would pluck it on his coronation day. In front of everyone. _That _would serve him.

"He is dead," she announced, lifting her kohl-smeared eyes once more, narrowing them with grief and contempt, and briefly noting that the rain had stopped as abruptly as it had begun. "I..."

She could not say it. By God, she _would _say it. She would not be emotional in front of Guy.

"I...have killed him," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper she had not willed.

Guy stared. "My God," he said in a low voice.

"Take him," she said. "Have him...him...buried. There must be an announcement to the people, to know that once again—"

"Their king is dead," he finished, looking at her with a strange mix of fascination, horror, and what could almost have been taken for pity, if she'd thought he had any.

She deplored his gaze.

"Long—" He had enough sense to break that sentence off. If he hadn't, he would have been thoroughly and mercilessly emasculated by her small hidden dagger on the spot. And then she would have plunged it through his heart, loving to watch him die so slowly.

_Long live the king? May he rot in torment! It is he who should have contracted leprosy, not my son!_

"Enough! Take him," she hissed. "Or are you frightened you'll be cursed as well? He was not contagious yet!"

Guy flinched, upper lip curling against her venom, then stooped, as if seriously considering undertaking the task.

He straightened, however.

"Nay," he said. "A servant would do better." He said it pompously, almost convincingly.

"Coward," she whispered.

He flinched again, his face darkening. He would have struck her, she knew, if he'd not been so afraid that perhaps now she had It too. _At least now he'll not seek to share my bed._

The thought was an insignificant comfort, full of red-hot irony that burned her soul to the very core.

Guy's steps faded, and Sibylla was alone. Alone with a body.

She had killed her son.

* * *

**A/N: Of all the incredibly moving scenes in this film, there are but two that impacted me so much that I couldn't stop thinking about them for days. The first is the deathbed scene of Baldwin IV, and the dialogue between he and his sister Sibylla. The second is the heartwrenching scene which inspired this oneshot, which should be self-explanatory enough. There are two other scenes that impacted me to a lesser but no less moving degree, and ended up being the driving force behind this piece. One is when Sibylla, standing beside her brother's funerary coffin, is overcome with what must be a mix of grief, love, and a sort of morbid curiousity, and removes the mask from his face--she is apparently stricken to her very core by what lies underneath, and it is obvious throughout the rest of the film that the terrible image of the ravages inflicted by her brother's leprous condition persistently refuses to leave her mind. The other is when she rages at Tiberius, saying of her son, "How long before he wears a mask? Will you have one made for him?" **

**That, and the quasi-similarity to the Abraham and Isaac story in the fourth paragraph, is why the story is called _Similitude._**

**Reviews are much appreciated. Criticisms, be they good or bad, are especially appreciated.**


End file.
